by Nina Siegal
Karin tried to remember something else, to distract herself from the howling—which continued, like a song, call and response, call and response. More than one. More than a few. Her father. Their last trip here. Being with him in this forest.
The thing that popped into her head was that he had stopped off at the grocery store on the way to the park that night and bought a six-pack of those tall beers. She remembered it because those cans made so much noise when you opened them—the pop and then the hiss—which obviously was not good for watching wildlife. He had always been so careful about that. Before, when he did drink, it was something like scotch, out of a flask, but usually only on a cold night.
After he died, people said that he maybe had been careless in Syria. People on the news sounded like there was some chance he’d kind of brought the sniper attack on himself. People said such annoying things! Then the things they said got in your head and it was hard to get them out. People had said that her dad was a drunk, and that was totally not true. Her mom had told her to try to ignore all the rumors, “all that media nonsense,” and not even watch the news reports about her father’s death because all kinds of untrue things got said.
“But why did Daddy get killed?” Karin had asked at the time, but she was younger then. Mom had told her, “Sweetheart, people get killed in wars. Hundreds of thousands of people have died there. Almost half a million. Your father was just one of them. He was unlucky, but it was not his fault.” The most important thing for the two of them to do, her mom had said, was to remember her father the way he had been when they knew him, and to try to hold on to all the good things he had brought to their lives. And that was how Karin wanted to think about him. But it was annoying how many different things there were now in her head. People could really mess with your brain.
Like Martijn. When they were alone, when Mom wasn’t there, he would say such strange things about her father. Like things that didn’t make any sense. Like that he was a risk-taker. And that he was an “adventurer,” and the way he said those things didn’t sound like he meant them as compliments. And when Karin asked him how Martijn could know anything about her father, he claimed that he “knew him pretty well.” She didn’t even know what that was supposed to mean. Martijn didn’t know her father. She knew her father. Her mom knew her father. Martijn was nobody to them.
Then Martijn would ask her all kinds of questions about her father that she couldn’t answer. And even if she could answer, why would she tell him? Maybe her mom trusted him, but that didn’t mean she had to. She didn’t have to. He wasn’t her dad. She didn’t even want him to be her stepdad, but her mom kept telling her it would be better for them. That was so totally untrue.
Karin remembered only her father’s best parts most of the time—except sometimes when she let a little bit of the rest of it seep through, get into her brain, make her confused. Why did the whole world think they could say anything they wanted to about him now? Why didn’t they realize that he had been her dad and that meant something?
The weekend when they camped here, Karin remembered, she had just unzipped the door to their tent when the mouflons came onto that hillside. First she saw one ewe and then another, and her breath caught. She held it and inched slowly back into the tent to wake her father, who was still asleep. “They’re here,” she said softly. “They’re just outside.” He propped himself up on his elbows inside his sleeping bag, suddenly alert. “Get your camera,” she whispered.
He reached over and pulled his camera bag toward him, then spun around with the whole sleeping bag, without getting out of it. Then he walked on his elbows toward the opening of the tent, and the two of them peered out together. It was a foggy morning, and a soft light shimmered through the mist that hovered over the damp ground.
The mouflons came, one after another, and then another and another until there were at least two dozen of them, and then four dozen of them, and then nearly—it must have been—a hundred. They were standing on the hill and looking out over the landscape, like, just checking out the view. How gentle they were, and how peaceful. And this was their park, their home. It certainly didn’t belong to Karin and her father. For them to be okay out here, they needed supplies, sleeping bags and tents and food and equipment. They were trespassers. The mouflons, these wild sheep with their strange, helmet-like ram horns, were the owners.
After he took the pictures, her father just went back to sleep, which was odd. Normally he was a real early riser and loved to get out and go hiking for the whole morning, before lunch. Karin got up and went for a walk, gathering kindling. No one passed by, and the mouflons were gone.
Feeling bored being all alone, she came back to the campsite. She found him still sleeping. So she decided to wake him up. When she whispered in his ear, “Dad…Dad? It’s time to get up,” he swatted at her like she was a mosquito buzzing around him. It was very strange—very unlike him.
Finally, he rolled over and looked at her, his eyes bloodshot and his hair wild, as if he was waking from a manic dream. “Sweetheart, it’s you,” he said, like he was surprised she was on the trip with him. “What time is it?”
She told him that it was already after 11 a.m. “Is it?” he said, bolting up. “Oh wow. I was really out of it. I had no idea that it was already that late. I’m sorry.”
He was still in his sleeping bag, and he looked like he’d taken a bath in there. His shirt was soaked. Karin said he didn’t have to say sorry. But she wondered if maybe he was sick or something.
He got up and got dressed, and they ate cold muesli next to the dead embers of the fire from the night before. He didn’t bother making a new fire with the kindling she’d collected, as they sometimes did in the early morning to cook oatmeal and brew hot coffee and warm milk. Her father just said, “Let’s go to the museum,” where he could buy some coffee, forgetting about their plan to go hiking. He just wasn’t in the mood to work anymore, he said; he had too much on his mind.
They’d packed up the whole camping trip and biked to the museum. Karin remembered that they had seen Vincent van Gogh’s paintings, lots of dark images of awkwardly shaped figures with kind of bulgy eyes sitting in dreary rooms in tiny houses or working huge looms. She liked the ones of people in the fields, holding big sacks of whatever it was they were picking. Her favorite, though, was a picture of a yellow café with lots of chairs outside, under a blue sky filled with stars. She’d asked her father if he would buy her the poster, and he did. She’d hung it up in her bedroom but took it down after he died.
Wait a minute, thought Karin, stopping in her tracks. If this is where we were camping, then the museum is not so far away. If she had a bike, she could get there in maybe fifteen minutes. Walking, it would take longer, of course, but it was that way—toward that large cluster of pine trees. She was sure of that.
But if she got there now, it would be closed. It was the middle of the night. Did it make sense to go there and just wait there until morning? Or maybe she should go and find a security guard or something.
Still, if the museum was straight ahead, then that direction was north, and the Otterlose Forest was to the west, or left. If she was where she thought she was, then she wasn’t so far from the Scouts’ campsite either. It had to be within a half-hour walk, then. Maybe she should just go there. The Scout leaders would certainly still be at the campsite, waiting for her. Now she finally had a sense of direction. For the first time in hours she felt hopeful that she would actually make it there!
Feeling a bit better, she chugged up a little hill and rounded a curve in the trail. She was about to start running down the hill but stopped short. There, right in front of her, were two bright shining eyes. Yellow eyes. She could see them even in the dark. Then she made out the golden fur around its chin and its ears, standing upright. It was a wolf.
Chapter 18
Here and Gone
Grace fumbled to find the button to press to end the call, and realized as soon as she’d done it that she could not call
Karin because Karin had deposited her telephone into a black velvet sack that was now in the possession of the Scout leader in charge of the trip. What was her name? Grace was sure she could not remember. They’d only met for the first time that morning, because there had been a swapping of Scout leaders, for some reason, at the last minute. Someone had gotten sick…it didn’t matter why. What was her name?
Well, the obvious person to call was Martijn. If she called him again, he’d probably think she was somehow just going mad while he was out there quietly trying to enjoy nature. Talk about violating his need for “space.” But of course these kinds of moments had to override all that domain building, didn’t it? He was her partner, her husband; he had to be concerned about Karin’s welfare first.
It was ridiculous that she was even debating this with herself. When had she become such a second-guesser of her own will and needs? She pressed his number and waited for him to answer. She’d of course explain it and he’d of course feel as concerned as she did.
But he did not pick up the phone this time. It rang and rang, and finally she heard his message: “Ik ben er helaas niet. Laat een bericht achter de…” She hung up.
Martijn often went incommunicado. It didn’t have to be because of a fight. Sometimes something she said would irk him, and then, without warning, he’d just disappear. There was a piano bar called De Nachtwacht, where they sang Dutch ballads far too loudly, and sometimes he’d end up there. It was a harmless activity, basically, and it was a good way to shake off some tension, she reasoned. The bartender would call her if he’d had one too many, to bring him home. He was almost reliably there, unless he wasn’t.
Grace would try not to ask where he’d been when he came back, because asking that just meant she was as controlling as he always accused her of being. It was true that she had a possessive side, but was hers so much more drastic, as he would have it, than that of anyone else who loved someone? But, she’d wondered so many times, was this love? Did he love her if he was always feeling this angry at her, always in either fight or flight? Was she actually that hard to take? Was it love if he didn’t pick up his phone?
Panicking a bit now, Grace remembered that she had been given a list of emergency phone contact numbers this morning from the new Scout leader of the trip. What was her name? It was on a piece of paper she’d folded up and put somewhere. In a pocket or a purse. But what purse had she taken this morning?
Paper! It was maddening. Who used paper anything anymore? She was not going to waste valuable time looking for a piece of paper. She must know one of these people’s numbers. The man who had driven them, she thought. Grace could remember his name; she’d met him before, somewhere, at a hockey parent gathering. Something like that. He was somebody’s father. But her mind was completely blank. She should not lose her wits now. She had to hold it together.
Grace forced herself to slow down. She held on to the back of a chair, dropped her head, and took a series of deep breaths. Breathing. She had to do it—yoga and meditation had in fact taught her a few useful things. If she slowed her breathing, she could slow down the world, just a little bit, stop its turning.
Rutger—yes, Rutger. The driver’s name had been Rutger. Breathing was good.
But as she scrolled through her contacts on her smartphone, she could see that her hand was trembling nonetheless. She heard her own breaths, shorter and tighter again. Finally she found the number for Rutger and punched it in to make the call. But it didn’t work, probably because her index finger had jabbed at the phone too quickly. She hung up and tried again.
Once she had gotten the number right, he picked up immediately. “Hello, you’re speaking with Rutger,” he said, rather formally, in Dutch.
“Rutger,” she said. “Thank God you answered. It’s Grace, Karin’s mom. I just had the strangest call. Please tell me that Karin is there with all of you, safe and sound.”
“Oh, Grace,” he started. “Is there something the matter?”
“Is Karin there? Did she make it to the camp yet?”
There was an excruciatingly long pause, during which Grace wished she could put her hand through the phone and grab Rutger and shake him.
“She hasn’t gotten here yet, no not yet,” he said grimly. “The kids haven’t made it to the site yet. They are still finding their way.”
“Is that…?” Grace just wanted to come out and ask for reassurances. “Is that normal? That must be normal, right?”
Rutger paused again. “It really depends on the group. Sometimes it can take longer and sometimes it is shorter.” There was a dry and officious way he was answering all the questions that Grace found irksome, but this was what people liked to refer to as “typical Dutch.” Noncommittal and middle of the road. In her mind, a useless answer.
“Could I—” Grace started. “Would you mind putting my husband on the phone? I tried his cell, but he didn’t pick up. I’m sure he must be tending to the fire or something, and I don’t want to interrupt your activities, but it’s important. Something has come up.”
Grace couldn’t tell if Rutger’s next long pause was the result of a poor connection, a problem with finding the right officious answer, or some actual dementia on his part, but she was about to scream when he finally said, “Oh, Martijn isn’t here at the campsite. He went as the backup leader. Meaning, he went behind the kids. Riekje and I came ahead to set up the camp, and Riekje just left to track back and be the front guide. I’m staying at the campsite to welcome them when they arrive, preparing the sausages and hot chocolate.”
This new information did not correlate with what she thought she already knew about Martijn’s whereabouts. She’d heard him setting up the camp with the others, hadn’t she? “But I spoke to him earlier tonight, and he said he was setting up the campsite, hauling logs, with you.”
Rutger laughed, a sign of human life. “Ha ha, no, we aren’t doing any hauling of logs over here. They send us out with precut timber. The park has rules about using local wood. Not allowed. Makes it easier, and more environmentally sustainable. When they came in, Martijn chose to follow the group, and Riekje and I came here.” His tone in the last part suggested that he might be irritated at having to repeat himself because she somehow failed to grasp the protocol.
Grace wasn’t going to start to question what a “backup leader” was supposed to do. But she gathered that Martijn was following the group, probably not far behind, to make sure they were safely making their way. That was what she had been told when they signed up for the dropping—that the kids would certainly feel like they were on their own in the woods, but in fact there would be plenty of adult supervision. The adults would be just a little bit ahead and a little bit behind, and if the kids got lost, there was a pretty vast safety net. The important thing was that they had the sense they had to make their own way out there. But they didn’t, really.
Now she was miffed. Why was it that at every turn she had the feeling she couldn’t trust her eyes and ears, or what Martijn was telling her? A piece of information she’d received conflicted directly with her own impression of things. Was this something Martijn was doing? There was a word for this, if this was what this was: “gaslighting.” A term she’d always liked, because it came from that wonderful black-and-white movie with a young, stunning Ingrid Bergman. She is married to a man who is trying to steal her inheritance; he seems to have his wife’s best interests at heart, but in the night he’s trying to rob her, up in the attic. When he goes up there to search for jewels, she notices the lights dim, because the gas powering the lights in the house is being diverted to light that extra room. But he tells her that can’t be happening—something that doesn’t jibe with what can be directly observed. She begins to not trust herself, thinking she’s going mad.
Could Martijn be doing something like this to her? Or was she, perhaps, actually just going mad, like he sometimes accused?
Grace waited to try to collect her thoughts. Certain things were clearly true. “Some lady just
called me and said that she found Karin’s T-shirt in the forest,” said Grace. “And she told me the T-shirt may have blood on it.”
“What?” This time Rutger’s response was at lightning speed. “Wait, what?”
She repeated herself. “Karin’s T-shirt was found by someone, some stranger in the Veluwe. She said it was bloody. I don’t know why that would be. Do you have any idea why that would be?”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, but Grace understood that this time it was a stunned silence. “I…I don’t know what that means,” he said when he finally spoke. “I do not understand that. She was with the group when we last saw her. I have no reason to believe that anything has gone wrong, or that anyone lost anything. They haven’t arrived at the campsite yet, but that seems normal. We were here, setting up, waiting for them. Your husband followed them, and Riekje is on her way to guide them here. Nobody’s hurt, as far as I know. I’ll call around. But I’d recommend you contact your husband. He’s the one who’s currently most directly in charge of the group.”
Somehow this last statement sent a chill up Grace’s spine. But as soon as she felt it, she told herself that her feeling was wrong, absurd. Martijn wouldn’t hurt children. He certainly wouldn’t hurt Karin. What had gotten into her? She’d somehow spooked herself about her own husband. None of that was happening.
Still, it would be pitch-black out there in the forest, she thought. Even if the kids were together, how would they handle some kind of situation that involved blood?
“I couldn’t reach Martijn,” Grace said. “I sincerely hope Riekje finds them. Will you call her?”
“Yes, I’ll do that right now. Who was the woman who called you? Did she say who she was?” asked Rutger, who was clearly trying to offer Grace moral support. But she didn’t want to stay on the phone anymore. She needed some other course of action.
